Clear information helps women make choices today. Research can improve the choices available in the future. Together with Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, Dr. Mahyar Foumani works to advance techniques and devices for breast reconstruction.
When my mother faced breast cancer, I saw how difficult it could be to find clear, accessible information about reconstruction. Even as a reconstructive surgeon, I felt that patients deserved better explanations and more helpful images.
That experience helped shape Breast Reconstruction Explained: a book and a free educational website for patients and loved ones. Our moral ambition is simple: access to understandable information should not depend on the ability to pay.
Every person has different needs, and today's reconstruction options involve different benefits, limitations and recovery demands. The choice may also be to remain flat. Good information supports that personal decision; research asks how future options could become better.
Our work brings clinical questions together with engineering expertise. The ambition is to improve surgical techniques and medical devices, with attention to safety, practical use and what matters to patients. The descriptions and images here deliberately remain general.
Start with questions that matter in patient care.
Explore how techniques and devices might be improved.
Evaluate ideas carefully before drawing conclusions.
This page presents research ambitions and published scientific work. It does not announce a new treatment available to patients or promise a date when one will be available. Promising ideas still need appropriate testing and clinical evaluation.
Conceptual 3D illustrations. These are not images of a specific device, prototype or research result.
Mahyar Foumani is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Martini Hospital in Groningen. He contributes a clinical perspective to the research and shares information about breast reconstruction through this website and the book.
The collaboration brings together clinical questions, engineering and biomedical research. Researchers involved include M. A. Laurens, A. A. Zadpoor and M. J. Mirzaali. The shared ambition is to help advance techniques and devices for breast reconstruction through careful research.
Laurens MA, Foumani M, Zadpoor AA, Mirzaali MJ.
Acta Biomaterialia. 2026-09-09.
DOI: 10.1016/j.actbio.2026.09.001 · PMID: 42716413
This review brings together published research on scaffold-guided breast reconstruction. It examines approaches and the biological and mechanical requirements they must meet, while identifying important questions that remain. It is a review of the field, not proof that a new treatment is ready for routine use.
Earlier work includes hand surgery and the biomechanics of the wrist. Understanding how structures move and function is a continuing thread in this research. Explore a selection below.
Conceptual 3D illustrations. These are not images of a specific device, prototype or research result.
You do not need to buy anything to use this website. If you prefer a book, or want to contribute to the work behind the information, buying an edition is a practical way to help.
Book proceeds are used to keep this website up to date and freely accessible to everyone, and to support research into better breast reconstruction techniques and devices.
All the information from the book is freely available on this website.
The book is available in English, Dutch, German, Arabic and Persian. There is currently no Spanish edition.
Researchers, clinicians, foundations and organisations interested in improving breast reconstruction are welcome to get in touch about collaboration.